Author: azeeadmin

Twitter is testing a new tag that will make it easier to parse who started a thread. The new feature, which is starting to pop up for some users, makes it easier to find posts from the original tweeter within a thread, but may also help curb (some types of) abuse on the platform, making it easier to distinguish accounts that are masquerading as other tweeters, for instance.

Twitter confirmed the experiment to TechCrunch, noting that the tag has been rolled out to a “small percentage” of iOS and Android users across markets.

“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. As part of this work, we’re exploring adding more context to discussions by highlighting relevant replies – like those from the original Tweeter,” Twitter’s Director of Product Management Sara Haider told TechCrunch in a statement.

In practice, this will probably be most helpful for situations like distinguishing Elon Musk from the Ethereum-hocking false copies popping up below him, ensuring that users don’t have to read every character of a user’s handle before they can tell if it’s trusted information.

This solution obviously only helps users distinguish the “owner” of the thread they are viewing, but it’s a worthwhile start. As the company verifies more accounts but still allows users to easily change their name or profile picture, this could avert some imitation issues.

One wonders if they could have more easily distinguished the “Original Tweeter” in a more pretty way than by spelling out “Original Tweeter” beneath their handle, but it’s a small rollout and I guess it leaves very little room for interpretation, so whatever.

It’s certainly a small change, but it all plays back into Twitter’s more drastic (beta) plans to introduce changes like color-coded replies that give users more prominent interface cues to gather insights about the threads that they’re surfing through. The same beta app also introduces features like algorithmically-sorted replies and a generally more toned-down UI.

Microsoft’s Bing is down in China, according to users who took to social media beginning Wednesday afternoon to complain and express concerns.

The Seattle-based behemoth has confirmed that its search engine is currently inaccessible in China and is “engaged to determine next steps,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch Thursday morning.

Citing sources, the Financial Times reported (paywalled) on Thursday that China Unicom, a major state-owned telecommunication company, confirmed the government had ordered a block on Bing.

The situation appears to be a DNS (domain name system) corruption, one method for China to block websites through its intricate censor system called the Great Firewall. When a user enters a domain name associated with a banned IP address, the Firewall will corrupt the connection to stop the page from loading.

Several users told TechCrunch they are still able to access Bing by directly visiting its IP address as of Thursday morning.

Bing remained one of the few non-Chinese internet firms that still have their core products up and running in a country where Google and Facebook have long been unavailable. Another rare case is LinkedIn, which runs a filtered version of its social network for professionals and caught flack for bending to local censorship.

Bing also censors its search service for Chinese users, so it would be odd if its inaccessibility turned out to be a case of government clampdown. That said, China appears to be further tightening control over the cyberspace. Case in point, LinkedIn recently started to run strict identity checks on its China-based users.

Baidu remains the biggest search engine in China with smaller rival Sogou coming in second. Bing, which some users find is a more pleasant alternative to local options that are usually flooded with ads, is active on 320,000 unique devices monthly, according to third-party research firm iResearch. That’s dwarfed by Baidu’s 466 million and Sogou’s 43 million.

Google told the U.S. Congress in December it had no immediate plans to relaunch its search engine in China but felt “reaching out and giving users more information has a very positive impact.” The Mountain View-based firm shut down its search engine in mainland China back in 2010 under pressure over censorship but also cited cyber attacks as a factor in its decision to leave.

It’s a dark day to work in media. On the heels of news that TechCrunch parent company Verizon Media Group (formerly Oath) would lay off roughly 800 workers, BuzzFeed has announced its own substantial staffing cuts. And though they were anticipated, Gannett also made substantial cuts to newsrooms around the US on Wednesday.

In a memo to employees, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti explained that the layoffs would hit next week, reducing its workforce by 15% or about 250 positions.

“Over the past few months, we’ve done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms,” Peretti said in the memo. “We’ve developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model.”

Peretti added that he is “confident” that the layoffs would chart a sustainable course of growth for the new media giant — likely one that aims to turn the maturing media company’s revenues into a profit. According to the memo, that means a future in which BuzzFeed could sustain operations without seeking additional rounds of funding.

Between its smaller investments and two huge rounds from NBCUniversal, BuzzFeed has raised $500 million over the last decade. The company last raised $200 million in late 2016 from NBCUniversal, which invested a total of $400 million in the media company. BuzzFeed’s other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, RRE Ventures, Hearst Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.

Though the company cut 100 jobs in 2017, 2019’s layoffs are BuzzFeed’s most substantial to date. The news comes at an uncomfortable time for the website’s employees who will have to wait in limbo until early next week for the axe to come down.

“This will be a tough week for all of us and I realize it will be much worse for the people losing their jobs,” Peretti said. “To them, I want to say thank you, I’m sorry our work together is ending this way, and I hope we get to work together again in the future.

The full memo from Peretti to staff is embedded below.

Hello BuzzFeeders,

I’m writing with sad news: we are doing layoffs at BuzzFeed next week. We will be making a 15% overall reduction in headcount across the company. I’m sending this tonight because I wanted you to hear it from me directly instead of from the press.

Over the past few months, we’ve done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms. We’ve developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model. We are confident the changes we are making will put us on a firm foundation and allow us to invest and grow sustainably for years to come.

I’m so proud of what our team accomplished over the last year, including diversifying our revenue, and growing our business double digits. Unfortunately, revenue growth by itself isn’t enough to be successful in the long run. The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again. These changes will allow us to be the clear winner in the market as the economics of digital media continue to improve.

I’ll share more about our future structure in a few days, but today I want to focus on what will be a difficult week, especially for the people who are leaving the company. These are talented people, friends, and valued colleagues, who’ve made huge contributions to our success, and who’ve done nothing wrong. Even though I’m confident this is the right business decision, it is upsetting and disappointing.

On a personal note, I’ve never thought about my job as “just business.” I care about the people at BuzzFeed more than anything other than my family. This will be a tough week for all of us and I realize it will be much worse for the people losing their jobs. To them, I want to say thank you, I’m sorry our work together is ending this way, and I hope we get to work together again in the future. Our loss will be to the benefit of other organizations where I know you will go on to make formidable contributions.

We will be back to you with specifics on the process by Monday at the latest. Thank you all in advance for your compassion and kindness as we go through this process.

Jonah

If your company uses a VPN and/or a mobile device management service to give you access to its intranet and internal web apps, then you know how annoying those are. AWS today launched a new product, Amazon WorkLink,  that promises to make this process significantly easier.

WorkLink is a fully managed service that, for $5 per month and user, allows IT admins to give employees one-click access to internal sites, no matter whether they run on AWS or not.

After installing WorkLink on their phones, employees can then simply use their favorite browser to surf to an internal website (other solutions often force users to use a sub-par proprietary browser). WorkLink the goes to work, securely requests that site and — and that’s the smart part here — a secure WorkLink container converts the site into an interactive vector graphic and sends it back to the phone. Nothing is stored or cached on the phone and AWS says WorkLink knows nothing about personal device activity either. That also means when a device is lost or stolen, there’s no need to try to wipe it remotely because there’s simply no company data on it.

IT can either use a VPN to connect from an AWS Virtual Private Cloud to on-premise servers or use AWS Direct Connect to bypass a VPN solution. The service works with all SAML 2.0 identity providers (which is the majority of identity services used in the enterprise, including the likes of Okta and Ping Identity) and as a fully managed service, it handles scaling and updates in the background.

“When talking with customers, all of them expressed frustration that their workers don’t have an easy and secure way to access internal content, which means that their employees either waste time or don’t bother trying to access content that would make them more productive,” says Peter Hill, Vice President of Productivity Applications at AWS, in today’s announcement. “With Amazon WorkLink, we’re enabling greater workplace productivity for those outside the corporate firewall in a way that IT administrators and security teams are happy with and employees are willing to use.”

WorkLink will work with both Android and iOS, but for the time being, only the iOS app (iOS 12+) is available. For now, it also only works with Safar, with Chrome support coming in the next few weeks. The service is also only available in Europe and North America for now, with additional regions coming later this year.

For the time being, AWS’s cloud archrivals Google and Microsoft don’t offer any services that are quite comparable with WorkLink. Google offers its Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy as a VPN alternative and as part of its BeyondCorp program, though that has a very different focus, while Microsoft offers a number of more traditional mobile device management solutions.

Sunil Nagaraj, who’d studied computer science as an undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill, landed a pretty nice gig after deciding to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School. He wound up working as a principal for Bessemer Venture Partners, a top-tier venture firm with locations around the world.

Nagaraj helped source a number of deals at the firm over the next six years, too, investments that made him proud, like bets on the identity platform AuthO and the online dating site Zoosk, for example. But he was itching to meet with even younger companies, and he was itching to strike out on his own. So in the summer of 2017, he did, and now, 18 months of so later, Nagaraj says he has finally closed his debut fund with $30 million.

The name of the firm is Ubiquity Ventures, and its focus is on “software beyond the screen,” says Nagaraj, pointing to one investment, New Zealand-based Halter, as an example of what he means. How it works: with the help of a solar-powered, GPS-enabled neck band for cows, Halter’s app allows farmers to remotely guide their herds when it’s time for the animals to milked. Its software also keep the cows out of rivers and drains by creating virtual fences and can detect when cows are in heat or about to give birth, among other things.

We asked Nagaraj last night about leaving Bessemer, and what he has learned that other aspiring VCs – – as well as current VCs who aspire to leave their firms — might learn from his path. Our chat has been edited for length.

TC: You had a plum gig at Bessemer. Why leave it?

SN: I learned everything I know about venture investing from the team at Bessemer, especially from working alongside [partner] David Cowan . . But even though Bessemer’s large fund size and robust team provide enormous support and rigorous processes, that can be the wrong fit for very early seed capital and nascent technical sectors with uncertain outcomes. There are certain things I treasure about my new role that wouldn’t have been possible within any large firm, including spending one day each week coding and nerding out on new technologies.

TC: What gave you the confidence to bounce?

SN: There’s never a moment where it feels comfortable or rational to jump. Every founder of a startup or VC firm rolls their eyes when they hear someone say “I would jump for the right opportunity” or “I would jump if it made sense.” For me, I was in the midst of uncovering my inner nerd and beginning to see some of my investments take off  and those things, combined with some inspiration from the OG wave of single GP firms — and Manu Kumar at K9 Ventures in particular — got the ball rolling.

TC: Who wrote your first check who was not a family member?

SN: David Cowan. Next was John Hollar, CEO of the Computer History Museum for the last 10 years. (He stepped down last year.) We’ve known each other since 2009, when I arrived in the Valley and launched the Computer History Museum NextGen Board. He was a reference for VCs when I raised venture capital as an entrepreneur in 2010, and his confidence in Ubiquity was critical jump start.

TC: What was the hardest check to land?

SN The hardest capital to raise was institutional capital. Institutional investors like universities and pension funds tend to be savvier and have their pick of the litter, so I feel fortunate to have both categories of investors in my debut fund. Understandably, there are many hurdles to clear on track record, references, and portfolio construction for an institutional investor to commit to a new fund.

TC: You’ve already made nine investments, so presumably you were investing as you were getting your capital commitments. How much of the fund is left?

SN:  Yes, I have been investing since my first closing at the end of September 2017. I can’t say exact numbers, but Ubiquity is on schedule with capital deployment. Levl, which prevents the spoofing of wireless devices, and Eclypsium, which protects software in the real world from malware, were my first two investments; I made both in October 2017.

TC: How many companies do you anticipate funding altogether with this first fund?

SN: 20

TC: What happens if a company like Halter takes off and you want to continue funding it? Is the plan to use SPVs? AngelList?

SN: I have a healthy capital reserve for follow-on funding. After that, my priority is to ensure my LPs have access, likely via SPVs.

TC: Does Ubiquity have a geographic focus?

SN: Two portfolio companies are in the Pacific Northwest, another splits its time between Palo Alto and Israel, three more are in Palo Alto, and two are in Pasadena. Then there’s Halter in New Zealand. It’s not a total accident that zero are in San Francisco itself. My focus on software beyond the screen, deeply technical founders, and reasonable valuations hasn’t uncovered any SF investments so far.

TC: Are you price sensitive? What did you learn about this at Bessemer?

SN: Price matters to anyone buying anything. There’s a pervasive belief that a few companies make up all the returns in the Valley, so you shouldn’t worry about price if you have a winner. This may be true when looking retrospectively, but it’s sloppy thinking to apply when it is impossible to know if your current deal will be one of the massive winners. Also, high prices and pricing a deal to perfection too often results in down rounds and a messy aftermath for founders. My time at Bessemer allowed me to see so many good and bad startup outcomes, where price discipline only helps.

TC: How much traction does a startup need to have to get a check from you?

SN: Zero. I’m looking to back founders who are technical, know their problem space cold, and are going after a problem that fits tightly with Ubiquity’s thesis of software leaping off the screen and into the real world around us. I meet technical experts pre-idea, as well as founders with early products. My investments rarely have revenue when I invest,  but they should by the end of their seed runway.

TC: How much of an ownership stake are you targeting?

SN: Ten to twenty percent.

TC: What’s harder about starting your own firm than you anticipated would be the case?

SN: I wrongly believed that launching a venture firm would be similar to launching a startup. In startup fundraising, VCs are evaluating a specific product/market/customer. They have a very compressed time frame to decide. And they have monthly board meetings to provide regular input and even trigger changes.

With VC firm fundraising, their own investors have no concrete data about the future investments that will eventually populate the fund.  They’re on the receiving end of quarterly updates. And they’re called “limited” partners because they exercise no authority over investment decisions. The two worlds couldn’t be more different. As a result, LPs are charged with a much trickier decision and have a much deeper diligence process to make what amounts to a 10-year commitment.

TC: Anything easier than you’d guessed it would be, striking out on your own?

SN: Having no overhead allows me to focus 100 percent of my time on startups. It is more wonderful than I imagined.

Yesterday, enterprise tech accelerator Alchemist announced a fresh $2.5 million in venture capital funding. Today, it presented its latest cohort of startups, 19 in total, to a jam-packed audience of investors.

Alchemist invests $36,000 in companies with a revenue stream that come from enterprises, not consumers, with a bent toward technical founders. Its 20th cohort included a mental health startup, a construction tech business, a fintech company and more. Here’s a quick look at the startups that just completed its six-month program:

Cruz Foam: Makes compostable packaging “from the ocean for the ocean.” Instead of using finite petroleum-based materials, Cruz Foam transforms waste into a structural foam that is at-home compostable. The startup counts Pepsi among its first customers. Cruz Foam is working with the beverage maker on a sustainable packaging project.

Bobly: Gathers real-time information that helps businesses better understand their customers through a gamified software product.

DeepBench: The MIT tech startup’s software enables companies to create their own network of knowledge experts, with a mission to “unlock the world’s knowledge by reducing the cost of finding and matching experts.”

dumpling: Empowers gig workers to run their own “highly personal” grocery delivery businesses. Dumpling says they make $8 in revenue on each order and is active in 24 states. The startup is led by Nate D’Anna, the former director of corporate development at Cisco.

Ejenta: Allows health providers to remotely monitor patients from their homes using technology developed by NASA intended to monitor astronauts. Ejenta is currently working with health providers across the U.S. Ejenta charges health providers a per patient, per month subscription fee that’s 100 percent reimbursable by Medicare.

IoTrek: Leverages artificial intelligence and IoT to improve the productivity of construction job sites. The startup says it has raised $500,000 in funding so far from European and Indian investors.

AirBoard: Developer of “the world’s most powerful drone” for the agricultural industry. AirBoard’s drone is the size of two Toyota Prius cars and will focus initially on automated agtech pesticide spraying.

Walrus Security: Founded by Michael Walfish, a former professor of computer science at New York University, Walrus Security ensures digital payments are transferred safely. Walrus has already landed backing from some high-profile angels, including Alex Roetter, the former SVP of engineering at Twitter and the president of Kitty Hawk.

Insera Health: Developer of a voice-enabled app that collects a patient’s medical history to improve medical encounters. Insera says this improves the experiences for patients and doctors, with better communication and outcomes.

Laava Tech: Decreasing energy consumption for indoor farmers with proprietary LED lighting and a Light as a Service (LaaS) business model.

Oberon Global: Helps conduct and manage compliant token sales. Oberon provides a secure investor onboarding platform for funds, as well as companies raising money under Regulation D 506(b) and 506(c).

Autify (formerly known as Behivee): Automates software testing with artificial intelligence.

PenguinSmart: Initially focused on the China market, PenguinSmart provides an AI-assist rehab support service for speech and language therapy. The startup is led by Amy Kwok, a speech-language pathologist.

Rosalyn Inc: A proctoring platform that uses AI and computer vision to make exams secure and scalable. The startup says it reduces overhead and lets companies scale up their certification process while reducing fraud.

Gridline AI (formerly known as Solisite): Helps property owners turn roofs from liabilities into assets by reducing roofing costs and generating additional income for commercial real estate.

Tangent: Is using AI to provide high-quality content for marketing campaigns. The AI-enabled platform develops personalized images for the fashion e-commerce industry. Expects $600,000 in revenue by the end of Q4 2019.

Foresight Mental Health: Delivers end-to-end mental healthcare with a tech-enabled platform that develops treatment plans, provides a real-time tracker of symptoms and more. The company plans to open a brick-and-mortar location in San Francisco in 2019.

Bitesize: A B2B messaging platform that lets companies speak directly with customers via SMS.

Digify: A document security service that provides insights and protection to users sharing documents online.

The freezing waters underneath Antarctic ice shelves and the underside of the ice itself are of great interest to scientists… but who wants to go down there? Leave it to the robots. They won’t complain! And indeed, a pair of autonomous subs have been nosing around the ice for a full year now, producing data unlike any other expedition ever has.

The mission began way back in 2017, with a grant from the late Paul Allen. With climate change affecting sea ice around the world, precise measurements and study of these frozen climes is more important than ever. And fortunately, robotic exploration technology had reached a point where long-term missions under and around ice shelves were possible.

The project would use a proven autonomous seagoing vehicle called the Seaglider, which has been around for some time but had been redesigned to perform long-term operations in these dark, sealed-over environments. ne of the craft’s co-creators, UW’s Chris Lee, said of the mission at the time: “This is a high-risk, proof-of-concept test of using robotic technology in a very risky marine environment.”

The risks seem to have paid off, as an update on the project shows. The modified craft have traveled hundreds of miles during a year straight of autonomous operation.

It’s not easy to stick around for a long time on the Antarctic coast for a lot of reasons. But leaving robots behind to work while you go relax elsewhere for a month or two is definitely doable.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to maintain a persistent presence over the span of an entire year,” Lee said in a UW news release today. “Gliders were able to navigate at will to survey the cavity interior… This is the first time any of the modern, long-endurance platforms have made sustained measurements under an ice shelf.”

You can see the paths of the robotic platforms below as they scout around near the edge of the ice and then dive under in trips of increasing length and complexity:

They navigate in the dark by monitoring their position with regard to a pair of underwater acoustic beacons fixed in place by cables. The blue dots are floats that go along with the natural currents to travel long distances on little or no power. Both are equipped with sensors to monitor the shape of the ice above, the temperature of the water, and other interesting data points.

It isn’t the first robotic expedition under the ice shelves by a long shot, but it’s definitely the longest term and potentially the most fruitful. The Seagliders are smaller, lighter, and better equipped for long-term missions. One went 87 miles in a single trip!

The mission continues, and two of the three initial Seagliders are still operational and ready to continue their work.

Sequoia India is going deep into early-stage investing after it announced an accelerator program, Surge, which is focused on fledging startups in India and Southeast Asia, the two regions that it covers.

It’s been nearly six months since Sequoia India closed its newest $695 million fund — its fifth since its establishment 12 years ago — and with over 200 deals under its belt, it is going earlier than ever before. The Surge program is designed to work with a mix of companies; that could include founders with just an idea, to those at pre-launch or pre-seed, businesses with an existing product-market fit or even startups intending to pivot, Sequoia India managing director Shailendra Singh told TechCrunch.

“It’s a bold attempt to try to create a better program for seed to Series A,” Singh said in an interview. “We think founders are underserved. There is quality early-stage talent but we are trying to find a way to serve them better.”

Singh explained that the program is a result of extensive research. He said Sequoia India talked to startups, founders and investors, and that a series of Twitter polls he conducted last year show founders in India and Southeast Asia are too frequently under-capitalized, over-diluted and forced to spend too much time on the fundraising trail.

“We decided there is a better way,” Singh said.

So what is the Sequoia India solution?

Surge is aiming to recruit 10-20 companies per batch, with two cohorts running each year for four months each. Perhaps the most notable feature is that selected companies will receive a $1.5 million investment from Sequoia, with the option to raise more from the firm and other co-investors in a final “UpSurge” demo week that concludes the program. Participants will, however, need to pay a “program fee” although that is being waived for the first cohort.

On its website, the firm describes Surge as being designed to give founders an “unfair advantage, right out of the gate.”

That first program is scheduled to run in March and applications are open now, although Sequoia has already picked a small selection for the first program. While the focus is local startups, China-based startups looking at India and Southeast Asia and U.S. startups seeking an Asia will also be considered, the firm said.

Singh said equity will be negotiated on a company-by-company basis, but he anticipates that valuations will be will be in the range of “high single-digit to high-teens” pre-money. There’s no obligation for a Sequoia follow-on, and Singh stressed that a “curated” selection of investors will be invested to invest in the post-program round and even alongside the initial $1.5 million check.

Shailendra Singh, Sequoia India managing director

The program is quite unusual in being globally distributed. That’s to say that it is split into five ‘modules,’ each of which is hosted in a different city which taps into Sequoia’s global presence. That’ll include Singapore, China, India and Silicon Valley. Singh said each module will require founder presence for a week, when they will work together with Sequoia — including the firm’s AMP program — Surge mentors and others, before taking the learnings back to their company for the remainder of the month. The only exception is the final month, which will include an additional week for the demo segment.

Sequoia India has tapped its portfolio companies and other Sequoia investees to pull an initial list of mentors that include Nadiem Makarim (Go-Jek), Rajan Ananadan (Google), Byju Raveendran (Byju’s), Neeraj Arora (WhatsApp) and Kunal Shah (Freecharge and now Cred). Singh said more will be added after the public launch.

He added that Sequoia India is hiring dedicated Surge staff to work exclusively on the program. For now, the budget for the program will come from the India fund but, in the long term, Singh said a dedicated Surge fund could be created. That could be necessary given the potential costs from the program.

The focus is fairly vertical agnostic, Sequoia said, with a focus on the teams behind companies.

“The single biggest focus is on being founder-centric,” Singh told TechCrunch. “We want to assemble a group of founders who are quite special. We expect founders to learn a lot from each other.”

When I put it to Singh that Sequoia’s move into early stage puts it into competition with the very up-stream, seed investors that it works with to get Series A deal flow, he argued that Sequoia is already very present in that segment.

Pointing to a recent LinkedIn post — which reads like a precursor to today’s announcement — Singh said one-quarter of its deals have been with startups valued at $5 million or lower, with 64 percent at $10 million or lower.

“We’ve made seed investments and collaborated with other firms in the past. We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” Singh said.

“We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” he added.

Sequoia is well known for later-stage deals, but Sequoia’s Singh shared data showing that it is well invested in early-stage deals, too

That may well be true for some firms, but I can’t help but feel that others may be intimated at a deep-pocketed investor playing in their backyard. In such a case, there’s little more than you can do other than play along. That said, Singh seems genuinely keen to build links between Surge and other VCs at all levels.

“It’s not about us or them but what’s good for founders,” he explained, adding that Sequoia will “actively” work with firms to involve them in the program.

It’s definitely a fascinating move, and it is certainly one of Sequoia’s boldest strategies worldwide. It is too early to say if it will be replicated by Sequoia other global funds, but they will certainly be watching, as Singh himself admitted.

You can find more information about Surge here.

In 2019, we still don’t really know what to do about fake news. With nothing to disincentivize viral hyperpartisan headlines and other exercises in confirmation bias, online misinformation seems to run as rampant as ever. It’s a tricky problem, particularly because it’s one that requires the readers most drawn to too outrageous to be true news to challenge their beliefs. In other words, without some kind of technical solution or massive cultural shift, the fake news dilemma won’t be solving itself any time soon.

That being said, Microsoft’s mobile Edge browser is taking a modest swing at it. On Android and iOS, the Microsoft Edge app now installs with a built in fake news detector called NewsGuard. The partnership is an extension of Microsoft’s Defending Democracy program and NewsGuard for Edge was first announced earlier this month.

While NewsGuard isn’t on by default, anyone using Edge can enable it with a simple toggle in the settings menu. When I downloaded the app to test it, Edge actually nudged me to the Settings menu and then to an option called News Rating (this enables NewsGuard) with a small blue dot. The dot wasn’t an alarm-red notification but would probably be notable enough to pique my interest and point me to the setting, even if I wasn’t writing this story.

For now, NewsGuard’s ratings concentrate on US-based websites, but major sites abroad are included too. TechCrunch received a healthy green check on NewsGuard, indicating that we maintain “basic standards of accuracy and accountability.” Clicking the green badge next to the address bar presented an option to review TechCrunch’s full “nutrition label” — a rundown of pertinent information like our ownership and financing, content and credibility. The information was pretty nuanced, right down to the insight that “opinion pieces are not always clearly labeled” which is fair enough. It even included an example of a corrected story and how we handled it. As The Guardian noted, the Daily Mail didn’t fare quite so well.

The editorial deep-dives that influence NewsGuard’s ratings are impressive, though they do exemplify another issue that makes fighting fake news particularly tricky. Even if news sources are evaluated across a matrix of factors, there’s still some degree of subjective assessment necessary to make these decisions. While there are plenty of entities that could be making these calls, how do we reach a consensus on who should be doing it?

NewsGuard is co-led by Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Steven Brill. Like other editorially-minded news experiments, NewsGuard relies on a human team instead of algorithms. The company counts former CIA director General Michael Hayden and The Information founder Jessica Lessin among its advisors.

Edge isn’t a very popular browser, but it still makes an interesting case study in the intractable war against low quality information online. It also illustrates the central Catch 22 of the fake news era: The users who need a fake news detector the most are the least likely to use one. Microsoft’s Edge experiment with NewsGuard isn’t a solution to that issue, but baking some kind of news verification tool right into the browser does feel like a step in a compelling direction.

After spending eight months in an immigration facility in the United States, Abimael Hernandez made the tough decision to return to Mexico.

He had spent 14 years in Florida and was leaving behind his wife and three children to return to Mexico so that he could go through the process of returning to the United States legally.

Hernandez didn’t want to live in fear of being pulled over by police, he longed to own a car in his name and he didn’t want his immigration status to be illegal any longer.  

Upon his return to Mexico, Hernandez had worked in construction, call centers and sold CDs before finally being given an opportunity that made a return to the United States less appealing. Hernandez now works as a software developer at Ignite Commerce in Mexico and has integrated well into the country that he at first struggled to identify as home.

Hernandez’s struggle to adjust and adapt to life in a new country mirrors that of other migrants who are returning to Mexico. And ongoing U.S. government attempts to put an end to the DACA program instituted under President Barack Obama, an initiative which protected as many as 800,000 unauthorized migrants that had come to the United States as children,are pushing many others along the same path.

For the people facing an increasingly hostile environment for migrants who choose — or are forced — to return to Latin America, little support awaits.

What tends to lie in store for these deportees and returnees in Mexico is usually low paying service employment. For those with an undocumented status especially, no collateral in Mexico leads to problems in accessing finances, whilst having spent the majority of their lives in the United States, barriers in the Spanish language mean some returnees fail to be accepted into the Mexican education system. 

Though there are some government initiatives aimed at supporting deportees by providing shelter and food, this usually bilingual cohort is prone to unemployment, as well as the mental struggle assigned to the frustrations of reintegrating into a country that many can’t identify with.

It is the hardship of reintegration that inspired the foundation of Hola Code, the only Mexican startup of its kind that currently runs in the country. Founded by CEO Marcela Torres just last year, Hola Code is coined as hackers without borders and is a startup that offers a coding boot camp for migrants, ensuring that this young generation, new to Mexico, does not slip under the radar.

Geared at supporting the integration of deportees, the startup is prepping Mexicans to enter into a high-demand sector through an intensive five-month software development training programme that gives the students qualification, even though many have started from scratch.

‘‘We don’t know of any social enterprises or even regular startups that are actually tackling migration in Mexico,’’ Torres recently told TechCrunch. Although migration and deportations continue to make headlines, it appears that Hola Code might be the only Mexican startup trying to do anything about it.

Backed by San Francisco-based Hack Reactor, the Mexican organization costs nothing until graduates have secured a full-time job, and pays their students a monthly stipend without any bureaucratic red tape.

Collectively venturing into Mexican society with peers in a similar position, most Hola Code students also don’t plan to return to the United States and want to use their skill set in the ever-growing Mexican tech ecosystems. For former student Hernandez, he remains grateful for the support network that Hola Code became for him.

‘‘If Mexico had more opportunities like Hola Code I think returnees would definitely think about not going back to the United States and other countries,’’ he said.

The question now remains as to how international policies will continue to affect Latin American families in the future.

‘‘You create the program in the hopes that one day that you will run out of work,’’ CEO and co-founder Marcela Torres ambitiously explained.

MISSION, TX – JUNE 12: A Central American immigrant stands at the U.S.-Mexico border fence after crossing into Texas on June 12, 2018 near Mission, Texas. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants’ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political-asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The bittersweet reality is that Hola Code has, in fact, blossomed within the past year with now over 400 monthly applications from Mexicans and also Central American migrants that are seeking refuge in the country. Although the organisation celebrates the achievements of their alumni, who tend to quickly ascend into well-paid tech jobs across Mexico, the coding boot camp is never short of work and is now looking to open an office in Tijuana to be closer to the border.

The journey for the startup’s female founder, one of a small number of women in Mexican tech leadership, has also not been an easy feat.

‘‘It’s very difficult for a woman that has designed a business plan and has ideas to be taken seriously,’’ Torres explains. ‘’It took me a long time to find the original investors that would believe in my idea and in my capacity, as well, to run the organization because this is the first startup that I have executed.’’

The cultural burdens that still exist in Mexico is a reality that deters many women from entering into the entrepreneurial scene within the country. From finding investors to promoting an idea, it is the issue of being taken seriously which is most effective at stalling Mexico’s female entrepreneurs.

‘‘I think that it’s important for younger women to start seeing us out there trying to take risks and thinking that they can do it as well. Even if they’re not successful, that it’s something that is available and achievable for them.’’

Confronted by her own hurdles in becoming the tech leader of Hola Code today, however, her organization does much more than just in-depth coding. From encouraging young Mexican women to leap into business and tech, to helping each student find a job, Torres speaks of the hope, security, and routine that every Hola Coder gathers as they become immersed in Mexican life through this community.

‘‘Helping them navigate the expectations of  how to start a career in tech is one of the things that we work on and therefore it means that they develop the right skill set, and once they finish the program, to be able to successfully jump into big areas such as banking.’’

MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: Central American asylum seekers wait for transport while being detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The group of women and children had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants’ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Former student Miriam Alvarez is now a software engineer for SegundaMano. Growing up in the United States, Mexican Universities did not accept her US documents and she too began working in a call centre before hearing about the project, applying just days before the application deadline. ‘‘It’s ok to not know everything, but you should always be open to trying new things and learning something new,’’ Alvarez said, speaking of the broader messages that Hola Code delivers.

The overwhelming lessons that all Hola Code’s alumni praise is how the boot camp delivers more than just coding, but also important life skills that allow for the transition to Mexico to be easier. Through reasoning and problem solving, many are grateful for the structure and direction that Hola Code provides Mexicans new to the country.

Though many of their students had joined Hola Code feeling ‘American,’ the values that the group provides adds to the larger picture of Mexico’s growing tech scenes.

‘‘The biggest challenge for the tech sector in the country is access to human capital and the second one is retaining the talent.’’  By fine tuning the country’s coding talent pools with bicultural young developers that speak English, Spanish and also JavaScript, the organisation contributes to growing tech hubs such as Tijuana, Guadalajara and Mexico City which are increasingly gaining global attention.

Hola Code is one of just a few life-changing organisations filling the gap in an immigration story that is seldom covered by the media.

Providing social mobility to people that have been forced to return through education, employment and exposure to tech pioneers, Hola Code’s alumni are spreading the message of integration through education far and wide across the globe.

As long as the fragility of migration continues to be tested, however,  Torres and her team have work to do in their mission to produce Mexico’s next pioneering coding generation.